For our oil painting workshop based around the theme of Utopia we were asked to critique a fellow students unfinished painting using Feldmans Art Criticism technic. I was charged with looking at and discussing the attached piece.
The painting was on a stretched canvas approximately 36x24cm. The ground was a thin rubbed wash of mixed yellows and pale oranges, the painting then had clear and distinct areas of interest. to the left hand side the artist had painted a loose continuous line with a flat brush in a subtle pinkish red ribbon effect travelling vertically over two thirds of the canvas, the top not quite reaching the canvas edge with the bottom of the ribbon terminating onto a thicker blue overlay, possibly representing a sky, this in turn was above a green area representing a line of trees blowing in the wind. Situated at the union of the ribbon base and the sky effect was the outline of a grey cat sitting with pricked up ears and a wide smile, Cheshire Cat in pose. These features almost covered the left hand side of the canvas with a distinct separation from the opposing side. The Right hand side was dominated by a large grey wave effect showing a rough rude sea lapping at the base of a gothic fascard possibly that of a church. There was little to out line the building apart from a couple of linear features not on the vertical but were clearly aspects of the walls. Three gothic arched windows sat above the crest of a gothic arch doorway. Towards the centre of the canvas a darker brown tall slender window loomed unglazed again repeating the gothic arch but seemed unattached and separate to the other building. The main central section of the canvas was positioned a mysterious grey rectangular block of washed paint on a 45 degree angle at odds with the other elements, unsure of what this represented I assume it is still in progress. All the other aspects of the piece are either directly representational or can be explained in a landscape context and once completed the unfinished parts will no doubt be self explanatory.
The overall feeling the painting gave me was mixed, the ground colour and image of a cat seemed to be from a happy place or from some sentimental memories of times past but the rough swirling sea and austere building set at an eiry angle with its features not dissimilar to a monsters face seemed at odds with the rest of the composition, as the work was set in two very different sections possibly this was deliberate? with the left a happier place or time and the right a more frightening or troubled time with the grey area crossing the border between the two. A very good and effective start to this piece and look forward to seeing it again on completion.
Michael Palmer 